Hi all,
I hava a question when reading the source of Hibernate, why are all the constants encapsulated into classes, for instance, FlushMode.AUTO, the value return is an instance of Flush class. can't it do the job by simply using a String? thanks for your answer:)

Arnold

I'ts called encapsulation.

hi max, I understand it's encapsulation, are there some more benefits of returning the constants in it's own type rather than returning a built-in type. many thanks.

there are no builtin type for our fetchmode, entitymode etc.

So if you just pass a string around you don't get relevant type checking (every mode is a string, but not all strings represent a mode)
plus all your method signatures just say "String" instead of "FetchMode"
which is much more usefull.